


or maybe as sure as tomorrow will come

by betweenthebliss



Category: Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Genre: Childhood Friends, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Gentian House (Kushiel's Legacy), Mentions of Het Sex, Mentions of Sex, Night Court History (Kushiel's Legacy), The Night Court (Kushiel's Legacy)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28137882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenthebliss/pseuds/betweenthebliss
Summary: After her first Midwinter Masque, young Phedre wants to learn more about Gentian House. Hyacinthe helps her get inside the walls, and a new friend gives her a peek into the past.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	or maybe as sure as tomorrow will come

**Author's Note:**

  * For [calenlily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calenlily/gifts).



It was in the winter of my ninth year, in the weeks after that fateful Longest Night when Baudoin de Trevalion named me joy-bearer, that I thought it meet that I learn more of the other Houses of the Night Court. The displays put on by the Houses at the Midwinter Masque had piqued my curiosity beyond bearing, and since my place outside the Court proper was now assured, I had little reason not to satisfy it-- or at least, to make the attempt. 

To be sure, gaining entry into the Houses proper was no small thing, as evidenced by my own difficulty in exiting Cereus House unseen. So instead I went to the person who I thought might be most likely both to know how to gain entry, and to share that knowledge with me. 

Hyacinthe pretended not to know what I was talking about, at first. He did love to keep an air of mystery about him, especially with me, and even moreso after Delaunay had named me  _ anguisette _ and proclaimed the touch of Kushiel upon my destiny. But I was not too proud to beg, and I pleaded with him until he was either moved by my pathos or simply sick of hearing me whine.

"I know a cook who works for Gentian House," he admitted at last. "She might be able to sneak us in."

"Us?" At his raised eyebrow, I hastened to explain, "I didn't think you'd want to come, especially to Gentian." The House whose canon was mysticism, whose words were "Truth and Vision"-- I'd expected him to scoff, to call their devotions an affront to those, like his mother, who had the true gift. 

"And pass up the chance to see the inside of a House of the Night Court for free?" He grinned, the glint in his eye promising adventure, as always. "Not on your life."

So it was that on the last day of the year, when the City of Elua's residents adorned their doors with mistletoe, ate oysters and took to the streets at midnight to greet the new year with shouting and song, I slipped once more over the wall of Cereus House. But instead of making my way down to Night's Doorstep, I met Hyacinthe in a little square not far from where I'd made landfall, and together we raced through the streets to our destination.

The walls surrounding Gentian were as high as those keeping the world at bay from Cereus, but made of a tightly-latticed wood in a warm, rich brown. So skillful was the workmanship, the seam of the back gate was all but invisible until Hyacinthe knocked on a section of wall, and it swung open to reveal a young woman perhaps twice our age, her warm brown skin and exuberant dark hair marking her as one of Hyacinthe's kin, a fellow  _ tsingano _ . 

"Quick and quiet, or they'll have my head," she said, grinning with a shake of her head. "You have strange friends, Hyas."

"You'd know, Amina," Hyacinthe said, returning her grin. "All we want's a look around."

"And maybe a story, if you've got one," I added hopefully, ignoring Hyacinthe's elbow in my ribs. 

"We'll see," said Amina, her expression sly. "Now follow me, like I said, quick and quiet."

A covered walkway led from the back gate to the kitchens, with no view of the gardens we passed save through narrow windows cut here and there into the latticework. I paused at one and fit my eye to it; I saw greens upon greens in every hue, and through the spiky leaves of a plant I didn't recognize, a field of sand, an adept at the center pulling a rake slowly through the fine whiteness of it, leaving perfect lines in its wake. His chest was bare, the expression on his face serene, the sound of falling water lending the whole picture an air of peace I had never experienced for myself. 

"Hsst," said Amina, and Hyacinthe grabbed me by the hand, pulling me on. 

The end of the walkway brought us into the kitchens, where Amina quickly thrust a pair of smocks at us, dark grey trimmed with the deep blue of the flower that gave the House its name. "This should help you blend in," she said. "Now I'm going to go for the Dowayne's second's office, you'll follow me quiet as mice, and we'll come straight back here with no one the wiser."

Her direct gaze pinned me as surely as Delaunay's had, and I nodded, the import suddenly heavy on my chest of what would happen to me if we were caught. 

We slipped out of the kitchens behind her, and made our way up a plain but spacious staircase to a door with a pane of blue glass at Amina's eye level. The square of light it threw on the stairs was blocked as Amina peered through it-- and then she was unlocking the door, leading us into Gentian House proper. 

It would be years before I would enter this room again, that time as a patron seeking relief from the horrors of my dreams. Younger now and far less urbane, I felt my eyes widen as I took in our surroundings. The room was low and wide, arched windows interspersed with huge potted ferns and flowering vines as thick as my arm. Silk screens painted with mythical creatures gave the plush velvet couches the illusion of privacy, cushions lay scattered on the floor, and a gilded table against one wall held an opium pipe. 

That sound of trickling water reached my ears again, and I found its source in a marble spout on the wall, its face carved in the mask of Morpheus, the Tiberian god of dreams. Water poured from his open mouth into a channel on the floor, running toward a small pool at the center of the room, from which sprouted lilies and grasses. Craning my neck, I saw the flash of orange marking a fish's passing.

My feet were still moving without my controlling them, and I had to turn and look where I was going as we passed out of the ornate room and into a hallway, tiled floor to ceiling in a mosaic of gold and cobalt and crimson. We passed through a foyer whose ceiling domed high overhead; looking up, I saw it was painted like a summer sky, pale blue with streaks of white for clouds. From somewhere up above, the strings of a harp were being softly plucked.

Up a set of three stairs, and this time the hallway we walked down sported an intricate parquet floor, soft yellow wood set against tiles as dark as my hair, and walls of a similar tessellated lattice to the one we'd passed through to enter the building. 

In architecture, as in all things, we d'Angelines prized beauty above all, and Gentian House was making my mind spin with wonder at the profusion of color and texture on offer, so different from the dignified silver and gold of Cereus House. 

Amina stopped in front of an arched double door, knocked three times, and when no answer was forthcoming, slid one of the doors open into a cunning pocket in the wall, smooth as butter. 

Inside the Dowayne's Second's office, the walls were the color of new cream, the trim painted the exact shade of the trim on my smock. A wide window provided a view onto the gardens below, a green and white backdrop to the Second's large desk, and the carpet underneath my feet was thick as a feather blanket. 

Amina slid a folded sheaf of papers out of her apron pocket-- later, after Delaunay, I would think to be curious about what those papers contained-- and placed them on the Second's desk, then turned and quickly ushered us out. 

~

Back in the kitchen, the bustle of preparation for the night's festivities moved around me like a current. My head fairly swimming with all I'd seen, I sat on the little stool Amina pointed me toward, and accepted the buttery roll she handed me from a nearby platter with only a cow-eyed look of gratitude. 

"You still want that story? I've got a minute, long as I can knead while I talk." She reached for a stoneware jar on the counter in front of her and plunged a hand inside, coming out with a fistful of flour which she shook over the surface. 

"Yes," I said quickly, before Hyacinthe could intervene. He didn't object, though, and I thought finally his curiosity might have been pricked as much as mine was. 

"Most of what they do here is only as mystical as the patrons want it to be," Amina said, her hands pushing at the dough, first the right, then the left, folding and flattening it in a rhythmic motion. "But there are stories of a few adepts who had real gifts. Not just the wit and learning to interpret dreams, but the talent of dreaming true. Mouth shut," she said with a sharp look at Hyacinthe, whose mouth had indeed been open, but he closed it again with an audible click of teeth.

"As I said, the talent of dreaming true, which is not the  _ dromonde _ , but something different which we  _ tsingani _ have no part in. Most mortals don't, but one who's said to have had the way of it was Eislyn no Gentian. She was the prize bloom in Gentian's bouquet during the reign of King Ganelon's great-great-grandfather Albert, skilled in healing the body but famed for easing what ails the mind. Dreams, especially, were her forte, and it was said that if you slept beside her, dreamed beside her, you were never the same again afterward."

"Eislyn was at the height of her popularity the autumn the Queen announced she was pregnant. It would be her first, if she brought it to term, and the third such disappointed hope if she did not. Night's Doorstep was aflame with wagers-- would she birth the babe, would she not, would it be a boy or a girl-- and Bryony adepts complained their patrons could talk of little else. It didn't concern Eislyn much, until her Dowayne called her to review a proposed contract for the Longest Night."

My eyes grew wide, knowing now from experience that whatever happened on the Longest Night would be full of intrigue and importance. 

"They don't take anonymous patrons in the Night Court," Amina went on, "so the Dowayne knew the identity of the man who'd asked for Eislyn's services. But he wouldn't tell Eislyn-- wouldn't even tell his Second-- except to say he was a person of great importance who required his privacy. Eislyn asked if she could sleep on it before signing the contract, and of course the Dowayne agreed. The next morning, she came to his office and signed."

"That Longest Night was bitterly cold, and like all the other Houses, Gentian emptied itself to join the throngs attending the Midwinter Masque at Cereus House-- save for Eislyn, who awaited her patron with only the Dowayne's most trusted manservant to attend on them."

"It was full night, but the horologists had not yet cried midnight, when a coach-and-four arrived, its passenger emerging swathed in a dark cape and hood-- and as Eislyn bade him welcome, he dropped the hood to reveal a face hidden by a velvet mask."

Hyacinthe and I exchanged significant glances, but Amina pretended not to see them, just kept kneading. 

"That mask stayed on the whole night through, and whatever arts Eislyn used on her mysterious patron remained private between they two. But when they lay down to sleep in her warm feather bed, the incense burning low in its brazier, the masked man dreamed, and so too did Eislyn."

"In the morning, over tea and fresh bread, she told him of it-- the field of blue flowers on the bank of a river, the happy woman and her young son feeding the swans while a hawk flew overhead. She told it plainly, without the kind of storyteller's art a Mendicant would have, so she was surprised to find her patron's eyes filling with tears behind his mask. When he stood and brusquely took his leave, she feared she'd offended him-- but he paid her fee and more besides, and spoke naught but praise to the Dowayne after."

"Eislyn put the strange encounter from her mind, as much as one might do with such a mystery to chew over. But she had other patrons and the training of Gentian House novices to attend to, and so before she knew it, a few months had passed, and in the early spring the Queen of Terre d'Ange birthed a baby boy. The whole city was in riots of celebration," Amina said, sighing as if at a fond memory. "But scarce had Eislyn heard the news than a novice came to summon her to the Dowayne's office."

"She arrived, concerned over what might have caused the Dowayne to summon her directly at such a time. Imagine her shock, then," and here Amina caught my eye, her own sparkling with mischief, "when the Dowayne hefted a sack full of gold onto the desk, and said that Eislyn's marque had been paid."

I stifled a gasp, but barely. "It wasn't--"

Amina managed to shrug while still kneading dough. "We'll never know. But recall, swans are the emblem of House Courcel, and Eislyn dreamed of a mother and son, and swans."

Seeming to decide all of a sudden that the dough was done, Amina dusted her hands clean with a few hard slaps against her apron, and tipped the smooth mass of it back into the crock she'd poured it out from. "There, you've had your story and your peek behind the veil," she said, beginning to herd us back toward the door we'd come in through. "And I've got a dozen more loaves to get ready before dinner." 

Back on the street, scarcely an hour after we'd first been let through that invisible gate, we were quiet as we made our way toward the park where we'd part company. "Do you think--" I burst out finally, unable to keep my thoughts to myself.

"I think all the houses have a story about a time the King or Queen came to them in disguise," Hyacinthe said, but he sounded more thoughtful than dismissive, and his eyes were far away. 

"And what do you think now about the mystics of Gentian House?" I challenged, keen to have him admit to my face that the traditions of my upbringing had merit and mystery of their own, even if they were not  _ tsingani. _

"I still haven't seen any of them at work with my own two eyes," he said, his mouth dipping into that smirk I loved and hated. "Just heard a story about a girl who dreamed of some swans."

Before I could tackle him, he turned to face me, walking backward in the street. "But I'll admit, that house is something else. A pond inside, and that mosaic? I pity the poor man who had to put all those tiny tiles together."

He was poking fun at me, and at the grandeur of the Night Court, and I let him do it, pretending to be offended and cuffing him round the ear, and we scuffled our way to the crossroads where we turned, he down toward Night's Doorstep, I up the hill towards Cereus House, which neither loved me nor wanted me. 

_ Someday, _ I thought, hitching my skirts around my waist as I leapt for the branch that would bring me back over the wall.  _ Someday I will find out if the mysteries are real. _

It amazes me still that no one ever told me to be careful what I wished for.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been hoping to get assigned Kushiel fic for Yuletide for years now, so thank you for the lovely request, it was a pleasure to fulfill! Thanks to R and L for betaing, and the title is from 'Fever Dream' by Iron & Wine.


End file.
